The Liminal Librarian

Catching up further, I saw this on in AL Direct — this guy stretches his library’s tiny collection development budget with sites like Paperbackswap and BookMooch. Smart!

On the same day, Clark had packaged seven books to ship out — paying all the postage personally — though he said both the incoming and outgoing stacks were smaller than average. Web sites make it possible. Clark has 800 books listed on www.bookmooch.com, 1,500 on www.swaptree.com and 2,500 on www.paperbackswap.com. He keeps a wish list of items he’s looking for, as do librarians and individuals all over the world. Computers do the matching.

In an era when any publicly funded institution has to spend wisely, Clark manages to make a lot out of a little. His annual buying budget of $4,400 comes from donations, grants, and proceeds from the library’s endowment. His salary and other operating expenses are covered by contributions from the towns of Hartland, St. Albans and Palmyra.

While he said the library has enjoyed steady public funding in recent years, it still operates on a bare-bones budget. Clark is the only employee, paid for 34 hours a week. There are situations like that all over Maine, said Stephanie Zurinski, the Maine State Library’s central Maine liaison.

Why the heck not? Especially for a smaller library that needs to maintain a tight and very current collection — what a great way to make use of weeded items and donations. And check this out:

Since Clark took over at Hartland Public Library four years ago, the collection has grown from 16,000 to 24,000 items and the formerly meager DVD, audio book and music collections now fill numerous shelves, according to Clark. Circulation has tripled to about 75 books a day and the patron list has grown from 700 to about 1,250

I’m darn impressed that he pays for the postage himself out of that 34-hour-a-week salary, too. I don’t know what he’d call it, but I’d call this Library 2.0 in action.

I was catching up on email this week and saw yet another mention of a focus on the “survival” of libraries. Although the actual document they’re talking about is proactive and positive in talking about ways to transform and move forward, it re-emphasized how often we use words like “survival” and “endangered” and “uncertain” when talking about libraries and the future of our profession. When we come at it from that angle, it really does sound like we’re scrambling from survival, and not working from a position of strength. Reframing our language and our approach might help us come at these challenges from a different angle.

It also made me think about just how much perception is key, in anything. For instance: I run a resume posting service over at LISjobs.com, for which I charge $10.00 for the first six months. (The only area of the site, btw, that incurs any fees.) Reactions to there being a fee at all generally run the gamut from:

• HOW DARE YOU GOUGE POOR JOB SEEKERS?

to

• Is it really only $10.00? That’s so reasonable. Thank you so much for this site.

to

• You didn’t tell me there was a fee?!

(This last, apparently, from the non-reading type of librarian.)

Same service, same fee, but incredibly different reactions. Now, I’m wondering if there’s a way to tweak the language on the page so that I get a lot more of reaction number 2 — and a lot less of reaction number one (which, I’ll admit, is more rare). I already tweaked it a while back to avoid number 3, but this oddly hasn’t worked so well.

A couple of things over the past week made me revisit the perennial issue of unattended children in libraries. First, my son had to have minor surgery. In two preoperative phone calls from the surgical center, they stressed that a parent had to stay in the building the entire time. “Of course!” said I. “You’d be surprised,” said they. And you think libraries have problems…

Then, we visited IKEA this weekend. A main reason we chose IKEA? Smalland, their free drop-off childcare service. Your (toilet trained) kid can stay up to an hour in a wonderland of ballpits, toys, and Disney movies while you shop in peace; my son begs to go to IKEA.

This got me thinking: I’d drive miles out of my way to go to a library that offered a similar service. I’d pay for this service! (Logistical issues aside), how many parents would appreciate a quiet hour to study, use the Internet, or just browse the stacks?